The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1887-01-05
New Orleans.

The first time | saw New Orleans
was on Sunday morning in the month
of March. We alighted from the train
at the foot of Esplanade street and
walked along through the French
Market and by Jackson Square to the
Hotel Royal. The morning, after rain,
was charming. There was fresh breeze
from the river: the foliage was ten
der green; in the balconies and on the
Wondering acknowledges flowers
bloomed, and in the decaying courts
climbing-roses mingled their perfume
with the orange. The shops were open;
ladies tripped along from early mass or
to early market. There was twittering
in the Square and in the sweet old gar
dens; Gagged birds sang and screamed
the songs of South America and the
tropics. The language heard on all
sides was French, or the degraded jar
gon which the easy-going African has
manufactured out of the tongue of
Bienville. Nothing could be more
shabby than the streets, ill-paved, with
undulating sidewalks and open cutters
green with slime, and both stealing and
giving odor; little canals, in which the
cat became the companion of the craw-
fish and the vegetable in decay sought
in vain current of oblivion; the streets
with rows of One-story houses, wooden &,
with green doors and batten window
shutters, or brick, with the painted
stucco peeling off, the line broken often
by an edifice of two stories, with gal
leries and delicate tracery of wrought
iron-houses pink and yellow and brown
and gray, colors all blending and har-
monious when we get long vista of
them and lose the details of view in
the broad artistic effect. Nothing could
be shabber than the streets unless it
is the tumble-down picturesque old
market, bright with flowers and vegeta-
bles and many-hued fish, and en-
livened by the genial African, who in
the New World experiments in all
colors, from coal-black to the pale pink
of the sea-shell, to find one that suits
his mobile nature. | liked it all from
the first; fingered long in the morn
ing walk, liking it more and more, in
spite of its shabbiness, but utterly I'M
able to say then or ever since wherein
its charm lies. | suppose we are all
wrongly made up and have a fallen ma
ture; else why is it that while the most
thrifty and neat and orderly city only
wins our approval, and perhaps graft
| fies us intellectually, such thriftless,
battered and stained and lazy old place
as the French quarter of New Orleans
takes our hearts? Although New Or
leans has only about quarter of a
million of inhabitants, and so many
only in the winter, it is larger than
Pekin, and believe than Philadelphia,
having an area of one hundred five
square miles. From Carrollton to the
Barracks, which are not far from the
Battlefield, the distance by the river
is some thirteen miles. From the river
to the lake the least distance is four
miles. This vast territory is traversed
by lines of horse-cars, which all meet
in Canal street, the most important
business thoroughfare of the city, which
runs northeast from the riverand divides
the French from the American quarter.
One taking horse-car in any part of the
city will ultimately land, having boxed
the compass, in Canal street. But it
needs person of vast local erudtion to
tell in what part of the city, or in what
section of the home of the frog and the
crawfish, he will land if he takes a
horse-car in Canal street. The river
being higher than the city, there is of
course no drainage into it; but there is
a theory that the water in the open
| cutters does move, aud that it moves in
the direction of the Bayou st. John,
and of the cypress swamps that drain
into Lake Pontchartrain. The stranger
who is accustomed to closed sewers,
and to get his malaria and typhoid
through pipes conducted into his home
by the most approved methods of
plumbing, is aghast at this spectacle of
slime and filth in the streets and Won
ders why the city is not in perennial
epidemic; but the sun and the wind are
great scavengers, and the city is not
nearly so unhealthy as it ought to be
with such a city government as they
say it endures. Although all on one
! level, it is n town of contrasts. In no
other city of the United States or of
Mexico is the old and the romantic
preserved in such integrity and brought
into such sharp contrast TO the modern.
There are many handsome public build
ings-churches, club-hOuses, elegant
| shops-and on the American side a
great area of well-paved streets solidly
built up in business blocks. The
Square of the original city, included
between the river and canal, Rampant
and Esplanade streets, which was once
surrounded bya wall, is as closely built,
but the streets are narrow, the houses
generally are smaller, and although it
swarms with people and contains the
cathedral, the old Spanish buildings,
Jackson Square, the French Market,
the French Opera-house and other thea
tiers, the Mint, the Custom-house, the